Occasional Work Search
Planted 02021-01-18
Money is required.
In my case, searching for work is made arduous by seeking a position with the opportunity to ratchet up continuously—work that compounds itself into valuable expertise. But I have my pitfalls yet to be accounted for.
I foresee my priorities for the next 10+ years (2030 here we come) to look somewhat like this:
- Get a job
- Pay down any accumulated debt
- Save
Until kids show up and throw a wrench into two and three, my ability to find a good-enough job as soon as possible severely impacts how much of two and three I’ll be able to do effectively.
I’m stuck in a catch-22. Your power and opportunity reside in your ability to say no to more things than you say yes, but you can’t know what you want to say yes to until you gain experience.
So how can you create the optimal conditions for lucky things to happen to you?
Become the best at what you do. Refine what you do until this is true. Opportunity will seek you out. Luck becomes your destiny.
Do more things, and tell more people about it.
Communicate problems, communicate solutions.
Help people move people forward.
Generate proof-of-work.
Turn on lights for people.
Make eyes-light-up.
Show up.
Partake.
Okay, but what should you focus on? I came up with my own buckets of Designer, Developer, and Marketer. But what do I focus on now?
I have the best connections and touch within the development route; I could go all-in on development and move into tech. But to me, code is merely a middleman for the solution. So, while the high-end tech market is hot and likely will be for the next 20 years, I see the bottom-end continuously eaten away at low-code or no-code solutions.
Design suffers from similar interchangeability, albeit not wholly. Design has gained increasing importance in recent years yet still strife with those looking at the result and thinking, that’s so easy, I could do that.
Marketing is the broadest bucket of all. It’s also where I’m leaning towards the most—working to surface and communicate problems and solutions. But what are those positions?
That’s what nearly all three suffer from—my lack of experience in the field. More notable is my lack of communication with anyone at all as I spend my days alone in my room reading books, articles, taking courses, and wandering around online. I’m a member of various online circles, but I mostly stay out of sight—and therefore, out of mind.
So the question becomes, how do I get into the minds of the right people? Who are the right people? The people who can grant me a position to connect with others and grow.
The people you pick, pick your future. Decide on those acknowledging your value with money and eagerness to pay it, then that’s the life that you signed up for.
Because I don’t often connect with others, I don’t know what value I bring. I can assume I have value to bring, but I don’t know how to sell it. Which cancels out any value I could bring.
I have no idea.
Such worry gets me nowhere and opportunities don’t visit caves. Maybe I need to stop asking questions other than What are you going to do about it?
The obvious answer, show up.
I plan on showing up here more often to Figure it out in public. Do more things, and tell more people about it.
The dots only connect backwards.
Reread:
Focus on a small handful of things that build together, with each making the others more impactful as they compound over time.
Pace, people, prestige, profit and learning.
Pace because you can’t burnout. People because relationships are invaluable—meet people. Prestige because it makes everything more attainable. Profit because financial security is a prerequisite to own your pace and learning. Learning because you need to fight entropy.
As you invest into your pace, the people you know, the prestige you build, the profits to fuel financial security, and your deep and broad learning, something magical starts to happen: each of these makes the others easier.